Lightning Aura Strike

by Mischievous Blue

Ponyville Pt. 2

Ponyville
Part 2

That night, Lightning lay awake on a spare bed that Twilight had materialized with her magic. She couldn’t get to sleep as her mind was filled with so many questions, mostly about what happened that night at the Gala. Was she the cause of the explosion? Did she really kill all those ponies? Were there Canterlot guards after her, right now? It was all so confusing.

She rolled over onto her side and gazed out at the moon, shining so bright across all of Equestria. She remembered a time star gazing with her dad. She stopped that thought abruptly and sat upright. Why could she remember something from when she was a young filly, but not a catastrophic event a few days ago? No answers came to mind, or from Luna’s night sky. She started to lay back down until she realized that her head was traveling longer than it should to reach the pillow. A fraction of a second later, her head collided with the wood floor with a sickening SMACK. Lightning muffled a scream as stars flashed across her vision and the taste of iron briefly filled the back of her mouth.

There was a stir in the next room and a second later, a purple aura encased the doorknob and the door quietly creaked open and Twilight poked her head in.

“Are you alright? What happened? Did you have a bad dream?” the purple unicorn asked as she stopped her magic and knelt down next to Lightning who was curled up into a ball.

“Just peachy,” the pegasus sarcastically replied as she rocked back and forth, trying to sooth the agonizing pain in her head. Twilight stood and started up her magic. Lightning was in too much pain to notice what was going on, but she vaguely heard Twilight say that she had just hit her head hard on the floor and that the pain should be over soon. She also heard the clopping of hooves and a small click as Twilight exited the room and shut the door.

Minutes after Twilight had left, the throbbing in Lightning’s head was all that remained, along with a fair sized lump. She pushed herself off the floor and back on the bed. She winced as the tender part of her cranium made contact with the soft pillow. She stared at the ceiling for a few more minutes before deciding that she should make use of the last few hours of the night to at least try and get some sleep. I’ll think things over in the morning, she thought as she turned and looked at the moon one last time before closing her eyes and falling asleep.

The next morning, Lightning was prodded awake from her slumber by a small green claw. She groaned and turned over and the claw, along with its owner, followed. Lightning felt a weight on her side and had an idea. She rolled back the other way, causing Spike to lose his balance and fall off. Lightning opened one yellow eye and stared at the baby dragon with all the anger she could muster while still being half asleep.

“What do you want?” she said coldly, her voice cracking slightly from her scream last night. She raised a hoof to the back of her head and only a small bump remained. She sighed and looked at the ceiling. “Sorry. What do you need?”

Spike stood up and held out a piece of paper.

“Twilight wanted me to give this to you. It’s just some information she wanted to give you.”

Lightning took the note and Spike walked out of the room. A little bit later, she heard the front door open and close. She looked at the note written in Twilight’s elegant mouthwriting:

Dear Lightning, by the time you get this, I will be attending
to certain matters in Ponyville and more importantly, Canterlot.
I will leave this with Spike as I know it will safely get to you
when you wake up. I have left you 100 bits on the table
downstairs for food and anything else you want. I will be back
late tonight. Enjoy!
̴ Twilight Sparkle ̴

Lightning pulled herself out of the bed and shook herself. She found that this was a quick way to wake up and get the joints fired up. She walked out of the room and saw a small flash from behind her. She turned and the bed was gone. She put one of her back hooves back into the room and bed reappeared with a small flash.

“Twilight must have it like this so she doesn’t use up unnecessary magic when the room’s not in use,” Lightning mused. She turned back around and walked down the hall, with the bed vanishing behind her.

It wasn’t until she reached the front room that she noticed it was raining outside. She walked up to the window and peered out. The sky was almost black with thunderheads and there was no sun or clear sky in sight. Lightning considered this strange because the previous night Twilight told her that the pegasi would start the spring rain in two days, not the next day. She sighed and, not for the first time, wished she was a unicorn so she could summon an umbrella. Looks like I’m staying inside today, she thought as she walked to the book table in the middle of the room. She looked at the books resting on the table and finding nothing interesting, spun it. The table rotated and revealed no new books of interest to her. Spotting a strangely bound volume on one of the bookshelves, she trotted over to a ladder and rolled it over. She climbed up to the book and pulled it out.

The book was bound in brown leather with a picture of a golden unicorn head on the front with a turquoise eye. The book was beaten and worn, but was still in one piece with no loose pages. Lightning climbed down the ladder with her prize and threw it on the table. The book made a loud THUD and a large plume of dust exploded from the book. Lightning coughed and waved her hoof trying to clear the air. When the dust cleared, she flipped the cover open and started looking through.

The book contained many interesting topics. The first and longest section was a history of Equestria and the founding of the capitol, Canterlot. It went on to talk about the first Princesses and various projects they had accomplished to make life more enjoyable for their pony subjects. It also mentioned some revolutions that had occurred when agreements between the Princesses and ponies couldn’t be reached. A little farther on, the book described, in detail, the laws that had been set by the first rulers of Equestria. Lightning passed those on without giving them a second glance. She landed on a section that she was hoping would be in there: a military section.

She read for hours until the front door opened and closed and Twilight entered the library. The rain hadn’t stopped, which was apparent from Twilight’s dripping hair and purple coat.

“The weather ponies have really outdone themselves. If this keeps up, we may have a flood. Hopefully they’ll be able to deal with the clouds when the time comes. What have you been up to?” Twilight asked as she levitated a towel over and started drying off her hair.

Lightning didn’t reply. She was heavily concentrated on the book she had found. Twilight trotted over and dried the rest of herself off and looked at the page Lightning was looking at.

“Oh, you’re looking at the different weapons ponies used during the early revolutions and civil wars. Back then, it was pretty hectic. The ponies wanted rights proclaiming that they controlled their own property and stores, while the Princesses wanted full control of everything and everypony. Thus, it led to a couple bloody battles. Eventually, the third Princess agreed to let the ponies control their own possessions, but with the promise that she received part of whatever profit the ponies made.

It was a deal for many years until the payments to the Princess started decreasing to nothing. The ponies had decided to revolt and started manufacturing weapons and stopped paying the Equestrian ruler. She was furious and commanded that they stop making weapons and start paying her again. The ponies refused and it started a huge argument. In the midst of the shouting, yelling and screaming, a single arrow flew through the air and buried itself in the Princess’s chest.”

Twilight continued to recite the ensuing chaos that followed as Lightning followed along in the book. As she had been told by Twilight the previous day that she had read every book in the library at least twice, it wasn’t too surprising to hear Twilight recite the pages verbatim. Lightning had been quite interested in some of the magical weapons that ponies in the wars had developed. They would go into battle with no weapons, assess the situation, summon the needed weapon and attack with that. Some other, more powerful unicorns would materialize weapons from everyday objects, such as a rock or a blade of grass and turn it into a spear or a sword.

Lightning smiled to herself. Unknown to Twilight, she had been practicing summoning weapons from thin air. She knew she had some level of magical ability, but it was limited. When she started materializing weapons, she decided she wanted it to appear out of her hooves. Might as well, since you use your hooves for fighting anyway, she reasoned. Other ponies had been stupid enough to use up all that magic, only to die early on because they used their magic on a ridiculous place, like their tail or legs.

Lightning spun around so fast that Twilight was cut off half-word as a 4-inch long white glowing dagger, protruding from Lightning’s hoof, rested less than a centimeter from the unicorn’s throat. Twilight gulped, staring at the red pegasus as she withdrew her hoof and admired the white-hot blade.

“Amazing, isn’t it? Took me several hours to achieve a small one. By the time you got home, I had managed three inches, but as you’ve been talking, I’ve been pushing out as much concentration and power as I could to make it just a bit longer. Its default function is to be as hot as possible, but I’ve been trying to make it more…me.”

Twilight found her voice. “How did you do that?” she just about yelled in Lightning’s face. “You’re a pegasus, not a unicorn. Any magic you do have is directed for weather properties.”

Lightning simply shrugged. “I’ve always a little bit of extra magic. My dad said that it came from my mother seeing as she was a unicorn.”

“But it shouldn’t matter whether your mother was a unicorn or not. Each species of pony gets certain magical properties based on whether they will be a unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony. It’s predetermined with the genes. In short, you shouldn’t even have this kind of magic.”

Twilight continued to rant as Lightning continued to gaze at her magic blade, occasionally poking the tip with a hoof. After about ten minutes, she pronounced to the room, “Done!”

Twilight stopped halfway through her sentence and asked, “What’s done?”

Lightning smiled mischievously and said, “Watch this.”

She walked a few steps back from the table to give her enough space to perform the task. When she was satisfied with the distance, she reared up on her back legs, and drove the blade on her hoof into the floor of the library. In the span of one second, the lights in the library grew blindingly bright and then promptly exploded, showering down sparks.
There was silence in the library, with no noise except for the rain outside. Twilight was the first to recover and shook her head to snap herself out of her trance. She used her magic to levitate a candle to her and light it. She placed it on the table and started walking around the room, assessing the damage. Amazingly, nothing appeared to be damaged. She walked into view of Lightning who was lying motionless on the ground. Twilight rushed over and put her ear against Lightning’s chest. She could hear a faint thump. It was weak but seemed consistent. Twilight sighed in relief.

A hoof reached up and placed itself on Twilight’s shoulder. She looked up to see Lightning smiling at her weakly.

“Told you I wanted to make it more me,” she said. “For all your talk and knowledge, you should have known magic can be manipulated.”

Twilight chuckled lightly and wiped away some tears that had started to form. “I knew you could, but I never heard of a pegasus doing it before.”

“As you said yourself, most pegasi can’t even perform magic of this type.”

Twilight got up and looked at Lightning while bringing the candle closer so as to get a better look at her. “What exactly did you do to my house?”

Lightning smiled, tried to get up, realized she didn’t have the strength, and let herself fall back to the ground. “I overpowered the circuits. When I was finished modifying the spell, I used the blade to locate all the electronics in the house and increased its output tenfold. The lights could handle up to four times the power being sent to it, but when it hit five times, they blew up.” She looked over to Twilight who had gone a strange red color. Lightning guessed it was Twilight’s rage building up.

“What? There’s no permanent damage. All that needs replacing are the bulbs. Other than that, all circuits are fine.”

Twilight seemed to be calming down. “Very well. Just next time, let me know when you want to try another stupid stunt. There are places for that kind of thing in Ponyville.”

Lightning nodded and suddenly grabbed her chest. She let out a scream that started to lower in pitch until the walls were shaking from the deep bass waves hitting them. Twilight was back up against a wall, staring at Lightning in fright. Lightning’s eyes had gone a pure white and there was white light leaking out from them, as well as her open mouth. There was a bright flash and Lightning once again collapsed to the ground. Twilight rushed over and checked for a heartbeat. She couldn’t hear anything, or feel anything when she checked for a pulse in Lightning’s neck.

She started to panic when Spike walked in the door. Due to his dragon sight, it wasn’t that dark for him, and he spotted Twilight and the unconscious pegasus at once. He rushed over and asked what happened. Twilight told him of Lightning’s unnatural power, her experiment, and the darkness that followed as well as Lightning’s lack of a heartbeat. Spike thought about it for a second, then walked over to the red pony on the floor, leaned down, put his mouth on hers, and breathed out. Lightning gasped and her chest fell and rose and again. Spike turned to Twilight whose mouth was open wide in shock. Spike didn’t have enough knowledge of magic ailments, so he suggested that they allow Lightning to sleep for a few days and recover from what had happened. He climbed up the stairs, walked to his bed, and promptly fell asleep.

Twilight got over shock of seeing her assistant kiss Lightning and used her magic to place Lightning on her back. She walked back to the guest room. The bed reappeared as Twilight entered and placed Lightning on the bed. She pulled the covers to cover Lightning’s body and suddenly had a thought. When she was a filly, her parents would kiss her forehead when she was sick. The unicorn looked around to make sure nopony was watching and placed a small kiss on Lightning’s forehead, exited the room, and closed the door.

Twilight walked back out the candle-lit room and sat on the couch. She figured that it wasn’t wrong to treat Lightning like a filly. After all, she wasn’t that old, only 15 years old or so, which made her about half as old as Twilight. She sighed and lay back, letting her body slide along the couch until she was laying down. She shows potential, she thought as her body started shutting down for sleep. When she recovers, I’ll teach her how to use her magic and get control, Twilight thought as she drifted off to sleep and the candle on the table blew out.